Characteristics of research in China assessed with Essential Science Indicators

Abstract

To provide an overview of the characteristics of research in China, a bibliometric evaluation of highly cited papers with high-level representation was conducted during the period from 1999 to 2009 based on the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database. A comprehensive assessment covered overall performance, journals, subject categories, internationally collaborative countries, national inter-institutionally collaborative institutions, and most-cited papers in 22 scientific fields. China saw a strong growth in scientific publications in the last decade, to some extent due to increasing research and development expenditure. China has been more active in ESI fields of chemistry and physics, but more excellent in materials science, engineering and mathematics. Most publications were concerned with the common Science Citation Index subject categories of multidisciplinary chemistry, multidisciplinary materials and science, and physical chemistry. About one half China's ESC papers were internationally collaborative and the eight major industrialized countries (the USA, Germany, the UK, Japan, France, Canada, Russia, and Italy) played a prominent role in scientific collaboration with China, especially the USA. The Chinese Academy of Sciences took the leading position of institutions with many branches. The ''985 Project'' stimulated the most productive institutions for academic research with a huge funding injection and the universities in Hong Kong showed good scientific performance. The citation impact of internationally collaborative papers

Characteristics of Malaysian highly cited papers

“…Aksnes's (2003) study of 297 Norway's highly cited papers identified typical characteristics such as they are authored by a large number of scientists and involve extensive international collaboration as quality dynamics. Similar studies conducted in China (Fu et al 2011), Taiwan (Miyairi and Chang 2012) and Russia (Pislyakov and Shukshina 2014) substantiate the widely accepted view that international collaboration is almost a requirement for publishing highly cited papers. About 47 percent of all China ESI papers have collaboration with the group of eight (G8) highly industrialized nations, especially the United States (Fu et al 2011).…”

“…Similar studies conducted in China (Fu et al 2011), Taiwan (Miyairi and Chang 2012) and Russia (Pislyakov and Shukshina 2014) substantiate the widely accepted view that international collaboration is almost a requirement for publishing highly cited papers. About 47 percent of all China ESI papers have collaboration with the group of eight (G8) highly industrialized nations, especially the United States (Fu et al 2011). Taiwan's international collaboration in its production of highly cited papers remain relatively stable with USA with the highest number of collaboration, followed by China, Japan and Germany.…”

“…The importance of scientific excellence has been widely documented in the existing scientometrics literature (Aksnes 2003;Aksnes and Sivertsen 2004;Fu et al 2011;Miyairi and Chang 2012), but no standardized method of evaluating research influence has been universally accepted. It is generally agreed that scholars' influence on research can be measured by a common indicator, i.e.…”

“…How different are highly cited papers from ordinary cited papers? It has been shown that highly cited papers are the results of international collaboration and multi-authorship (Aksnes 2003;Fu et al 2011;Glänzel and Schubert 1995;Miyairi and Chang 2012;Persson 2010;Pislyakov and Shukshina 2014;Tijssen, Van Leeuwen and Visser 2002). Do these characteristics holfd true for Malaysian highly cited papers?…”

Bibliometric Analysis of Thermodynamic Research: A Science Citation Index Expanded-Based Analysis

“…The most productive institution -RAS had an overwhelming majority in the total articles, and CAS was just down by three articles in 2010, following distantly by the other institutions. CAS as the China's highest academic institution in natural sciences played an active role in terms of scientific outputs in recent years as the exponentially growth scientific production in China (Li et al, 2009;Fu et al, 2010;Tanaka &Ho, 2011;Fu et al, 2011;Li et al, 2011). Although three universities in China including Central South University, Naval University of Engineering, and SiChuan University just ranked 10 th , 39 th , and 43 rd of total articles from 1991 to 2010, but they had high rankings (3 rd , 4 th , and 7 th ) with respect to the number of articles in 2010.…”